Blog Tour | Only a Kiss, Ines Bautista-Yao (Guest Post)

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Title: Only A Kiss
Author: Ines Bautista-Yao
Publisher: Chamber Shell Publishing
Date of Publication: November 29, 2014
Genre: contemporary romance
 
Blurb:
 
When she was nine-years-old, Katie knew she wanted Chris to give her her first kiss. It wasn’t because she was in love with him (no way, he was her best friend! Besides, she was in love with his fourteen-year-old big brother), it was because she could make him do anything she wanted.
Besides, it didn’t really mean anything. It was only a kiss after all.
 
But then things started to change. They grew up. They parted ways and went to different high schools. And other girls and boys—well, just one particular boy—came into the picture, throwing their lives upside down.
 
Told from the alternating points of view of Katie and Chris, this love story between two best friends will tug at your heartstrings and leave you thinking how the simplest things can mean so much.
 
 
Purchase links: Amazon | Buqo.ph (The book is on sale for ONLY $0.99 until February 14!)
 
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EXCERPT
 

Katie couldn’t get over what she had just witnessed. The kiss Kuya Ben gave her cousin wasn’t like the ones she’d seen in movies or on TV. It was quick and it was through a car window, but it was the most powerful one she had ever seen. It was as if he wanted to gift all the emotions coursing through him to his future bride, and the only way he knew how was through a kiss.

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BRIEF REVIEW
 

I found this book such a fun, breezy read! I love the chemistry between Katie and Chris, and I love the author’s easy, conversational writing style, which makes you feel like you’re actually friends with the characters rather than just reading about their story.

The idea of best friends turned lovers is very popular in fiction, so for this blog tour, I invited author Ines Bautista-Yao to tell us about her favourite best friend couples in fiction.

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My Top 5 Best Friends-Turned-Lovers
Ines Bautista-Yao

When I was a kid, a friend told me to watch Some Kind of Wonderful. She told me it was an awesome movie and that the guy falls in love with his best friend. Back then, this was something totally new to me. All I knew were fairytales, Disney cartoons, and maybe Archie’s love triangle with Betty and Veronica. But after I watched that movie, I had all sorts of feels. It was, I felt, one of the most romantic scenarios ever!

I never really wanted to write about best friends falling in love because I felt, after watching several other movies and TV shows following Some Kind of Wonderful, that it was a tired trope. But then again, the reason why anything becomes cliché is because people can’t get enough of it! And I, too, am one of those people. Even if I told myself I wouldn’t write a story about best friends falling in love, how couldn’t I when I too love the idea so much?

Here are my top five best friends-turned-lovers on the big and small screen. Naturally, Some Kind of Wonderful tops the list.

  1. Watts and Keith in Some Kind of Wonderful-She’s his tomboy best friend who is secretly in love with him. He’s an artist who is in love with the most popular girl in school. He asks for her help to win Ms. Popularity over, but in the end, realizes (with a little help from Ms. Popularity) that the perfect girl has been under his nose all this time.

That scene with such feels: When Watts tells Keith that they have to practice kissing because Ms. Popularity will expect him to know what to do.

  1. Harry and Sally in When Harry Met Sally– They encounter each other several times after college and each time, realize that they can’t stand each other. But when they’re both finally living in New York, they bump into each other at a bookstore and end up hanging out. Then they make a pact to be just friends. Harry says he’s never had a female friend before because he eventually falls for her. And of course, in the end, he falls for Sally and she falls right back.

That scene with such feels: After a huge fight while Sally rants and tells Harry he’s horrible, he looks at her, asks her if she’s done, gives her a big hug, and says, “I’m sorry.” And everything is okay again.

  1. Jenna and Matt in 13 Going on 30– He’s her best friend at 13 and when she wakes up one morning and is suddenly 30, she seeks him out only to find that they’d grown apart. But in her head, they’re still both 13 and he’s still her best friend. He helps her deal with the strangeness of her situation and in the end, when everything goes back to normal, they get married and live in a replica of the dollhouse he had given her on her 13thbirthday.

That scene with such feels: When they kiss on the swings.

  1. Rosalee and Pete in Win A Date with Tad Hamilton– It’s clear from the start that even if Rosalee only sees Pete as her friend, he is madly in love with her. But he makes it seem as if he’s just being overprotective. When she does win a date with celebrity Tad Hamilton and Tad seems to like her back, Pete decides it’s time to make sure things don’t get out of hand. Of course, in the end, Rosalee realizes that she too loves the boy who has loved her all along.

That scene with such feels: When Pete stops Tad in the bathroom and enumerates the different things he loves about Rosalee.

  1. Mindy and Danny in The Mindy Project– Mindy and Danny are doctors together on this show and they’re always bickering. But they’re friends too. He takes care of her even if he’s always making fun of her and vice versa. Now this is insane because I’m not up to date on the show but I know they’re already together (I haven’t gotten to that part yet! Having a 15-month-old and dabbling at being an author who needs to promote her books takes up so much time!). So I don’t know how it happens, but I’ve been following the show and I love this pair because not only are they perfect for each other, they’re hilarious.

That scene with such feels: (I’m pretty sure there are better ones after this one, but this is how far I’ve gotten in the show, so bear with me) When Mindy pretends to be Danny’s girlfriend and he has to hug her in front of the girl who is stalking him. The way his face changes when he looks at her is priceless.

There are so many others: Emma and Knightly from Emma, Kim and Ron fromKim Possible, Gary and Miranda from Miranda (if you haven’t seen the BBC comedy Miranda, you are missing out on loads of laughs and feels!), Ross and Rachel from Friends… so many. What’s awesome is that though the overall situation is the same, each person, each character has their own story, and this is what makes watching them fall in love some kind of wonderful. 😉

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About Ines Bautista-Yao

Ines Bautista-YaoInes Bautista-Yao is the author of One Crazy Summer, What’s in your Heart, and Only a Kiss. She has also written two short stories, “Flashbacks and Echoes,” which is part of a compilation called All This Wanting and “A Captured Dream,” one of the four short stories in Sola Musica: Love Notes from a Festival.

She is the former editor-in-chief of Candy and K-Zone magazines and a former high school and college English and Literature teacher.  She is also a wife and mom and blogs about the many challenges and joys of motherhood at theeverydayprojectblog.com. She has recently launched The Author Project, a section in her current blog devoted to the stories in her head:http://theeverydayprojectblog.com/inesbyao-author-project/

She posts on Instagram and tweets @inesbyao and her author page is facebook.com/inesbautistayao.

Blog – http://theeverydayprojectblog.com/inesbyao-author-project/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/inesbyao
Instagram – http://instagram.com/inesbyao
Facebook – http://facebook.com/inesbautistayao
Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5359512.Ines_Bautista_Yao

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GIVEAWAY

Want to win your own copy of Only a Kiss? The author is giving away lots of goodies!

For Philippine residents:

One (1) winner will get a signed paperback of ONLY A KISS, a gift card from FILA, and a back issue of CAST comic book
Two (2) winners will each get a signed paperback of ONLY A KISS, light up laces, and back issue of CAST comic book

For US/Canada/international:

FIve (5) winners will each get an ebook of ONLY A KISS

Enter the contest on Rafflecopter here!

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Thanks to the author and blog tour host Oops I Read a Book Again for inviting me to participate in this tour! Other stops are in the tour post here.

Review | (You) Set Me on Fire, Mariko Tamaki

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20622284Remember being seventeen and in love with someone you knew was bad for you? In (You) Set Me on Fire, when seventeen year old Allison Lee enters college, she has been in love once (disastrously), burned twice (literally), and appears headed for yet another romantic disaster. She finds herself drawn to beautiful classmate Shar, who soon becomes the centre of Allison’s universe.

As an adult, I immediately found Shar pretentious (the “too cool” outsider who looks down upon other students), and later emotionally manipulative and utterly messed up. I honestly didn’t understand the appeal, when there were perfectly nice classmates like former cheerleader Carly who were inviting Allison to join them in various activities. However, thinking back to myself as a teenager, I have to admit Allison’s decisions may not have been so far-fetched as I’d like to think.

Tamaki is fantastic at capturing the teenage voice. Allison sounds like a teenager without the usual Clueless/Valley girl trappings of authors trying too hard to sound young. Allison sounds smart, and more than that, funny. Here is a story about a girl heading into a toxic relationship, who’s had some problems with fire, and who feels she doesn’t quite fit in with others her age — and it’s funny! This is not to diminish everything Allison is going through — at times, her encounters with Shar and her flashbacks to her previous romantic disaster (high school classmate Anne), are almost painful to read because the emotions are so raw. But the narrative as a whole is laced with sardonic humour, and that, combined with an ever-present undercurrent of raw vulnerability, makes Allison’s story so powerful.

Take a look at this passage for example, shortly after Allison enters college and realizes her classmates there know nothing about her or her past:

So for a brief moment in time I was in the freshman threshold of opportunity: the people around me knew only what I’d told them about myself, Nothing more. They’d had almost no time to formulate an opinion for themselves and no one was around to inform them of anything different from what I said or what I did. If I smiled and giggled at their jokes, I could be a happy-go-lucky person. If I slept with the first boy I laid eyes on, I could be a slut. I could even get in a fight and be a loose cannon or a bully.

The world was my oyster. [p. 38]

I remember that moment of opportunity, that moment when I could completely reinvent myself, redefine who I’ve become. It happens every now and then, with a new school or a new job or even a new city. It’s exhilarating, and a great part of figuring out who you want to become. That moment of hope, so early in Allison’s story, is particularly poignant as we read on, and realize she’s falling into an old pattern, and that this too is a familiar experience for anyone trying to reinvent themselves.

The brilliance of Tamaki’s writing is evident even in the title, which is possibly one of my favourite book titles ever. The parenthesis create a dual layer of meaning, with both layers somewhat at odds with each other. The declarative, almost accusatory romantic statement “You set me on fire” is in tension with the directive “Set me on fire,” which could be either a demand or a plea. This subtlety is carried through with her use of fire as a metaphor, a somewhat overused symbol for passion, yet in Tamaki’s hands it feels fresh. From Allison’s scar to escalating incidents with fire in the story to the striking allusions to history and mythology, fire is woven through the narrative in a masterful way that is overt without, to my mind, ever being over the top.

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I made a pledge in 2015 to read books by Asian American women writers, based on a list compiled by Celeste Ng. Mariko Tamaki isn’t on the list, but this book happened to catch my eye in a shop, and I’m glad it did. If you happen to be joining me on this pledge, I highly recommend you add this to your list as well.

50 Book Pledge 2015 | Asian American Women Writers

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I’ve always been a fan of Harper Collins Canada’s 50 Book Pledge, but as I explain in this 2012 blog post, I love it more for its celebration of reading and for the community of readers that it builds rather than for the motivation to read 50 books in a year. Part of that, to be honest, is because I’m such a book nerd that I probably read 50 books or more in a year anyway, and aiming towards a particular higher number like 100 or 150 books feels a bit arbitrary.

Then I read Glenn Sumi’s article on the 50 Book Pledge, and how it inspired him to go from  five or six books a year to 55 in 2014. The article is titled “My year of magical reading,” and it reminded me of how inspiring — how magical — a reading resolution can be.

And that’s when I decided to make my own pledge this year. I’d recently read an excellent article by author Celeste Ng, about the lack of awareness around female Asian American writers. Ng talks about the feedback she’s received that there aren’t enough female Asian American writers around to invite to speak at conferences and panels, and then sets about proving this assumption wrong. She takes to Twitter to invite female Asian American writers to raise their hand and be counted, so to speak, and then ends her article with a fairly impressive, though by no means comprehensive, list of these writers.

So here’s my 50 Book Pledge of 2015: I will read books by writers on that list, as well as by other female Asian American writers who I encounter that may not be on that list. I cannot promise to read 50 books by Asian American women writers, because there are a lot of other books I want to read that don’t fit in this category, but I do pledge to do at least one a month.

Here’s the reason for the pledge: I agree with Celeste Ng that there isn’t enough awareness of Asian American writers, and particularly female ones. I find that despite efforts to the contrary, much still has to be done to achieve gender equality in terms of book review space in prominent publications. I also find that ideas of “Asian American” literature are generally limited to East Asian writers, and I’m thrilled to find that Ng’s list includes Southeast Asian (including a few Filipinos!) and South Asian writers. As a female Filipino-Canadian, all of this matters to me. And this pledge is my way of taking a stand and saying Asian American voices matter, female voices matter, and the publishing industry needs to pay more attention.

In this, I am also somewhat inspired by others on Twitter who have mentioned pledging to read more diverse books this year, or more books by women writers. I love this idea of reading for a cause, of an activity for pleasure also being an instrument for change. I realize this may sound somewhat pretentious — I am only one reader, who will likely borrow most of her books this year from the library. But then I think, if many readers do something similar, then perhaps a movement can happen. And perhaps a difference will be made.

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If you want to join me in this pledge, here again is the link to Celeste Ng’s article with the list of writers to check out. I also created a shelf on Goodreads with some titles from the authors on that list that I personally am interested in reading.